vicar of christ

and since I’m on memory dispension time, i’ll tell you the story of how I got heatstroke for the Pope. I was forced by my intensely catholic mother to attend World Youth Day 1993, which meant “making a pilgrimage” (nee “driving”) to Denver Colorado, walking six or seven miles in 100 degree weather across a plain entirely barren but for sagebrush and prairie dogs–only to arrive at a campsite where food and beverage was provided by McDonalds in tents designated by country, limp $4 weiners christened “brats” and being hawked at the Germany spot.
We had a mass, I got my grandma’s rosary blessed from 300 miles away while the pope sermonized from under a plexiglass balloon, and on the way back, I collapsed, sunburned and blistered, delirious, possibly hallucinating and definitely dehydrated. It is possible my heatstroke was God’s punishment for my renunciatiion of faith a few months before, after a debacled yet thankfully shortlived experience as 16-yr-old church cantor; or perhaps because my best friend Marie, who was not Catholic but who attended on my invitation, had popped three hits of LSD and attended mass with my mom and I a few months before that (she was so guilt-stricken by the stained glass of the Passion that she ran to the bathroom and flushed the remaining 4 hits from her pocket before father got to the homily). At any rate, I recovered with some rest and water, and never returned.
Jessica and I did visit the Vatican a couple summers ago, however, marveling at the ancient cobble walks, the milling nuns with their long linen habits in the Roman sun, the great pillars topped with saints in gold. I bought my mom a hand-carved, rose-scented rosary from there, as an apology more or less, and I think she forgave me, though she still has not let me forget her years of worry, martyrdom and tears, and prayers for every time I said the words “goddamn” or “jesus fucking christ.” I love her anyway, though I hope the next pope is softer on choice; Pope JP’s anti-abortion stance was the sole and solitary reason she voted for GW Bush.